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Steganography with Flickr.com

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Steganography is a way of embedding just about any kind of file or data within another “cover” file, though not noticably altering the cover file’s content. Usually this embedded content is encrypted with a passphrase of some sort, only extractable via special programs. So should you embed a file within a JPEG image, for example, the casual observer would only see the image and perhaps only notice something odd due to the image’s file size.

I decided to give steganography a try on Flickr’s system, wondering if they somehow sensed altered images and stripped the extra or raised a red flag of some sort. Since I’m primarily a Linux user, I opted for the Steghide utility, though there are several freeware Windows applications available that do the same. Steghide allows you to embed any data within JPEG, BMP, WAV and AU files, encrypting, passwording and compressing the content if you wish.
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So basically Flickr can be used as a personal off-site backup system for all of your documents, not just images. Steganographied images can be shared with Flickr friends to pass on documents or other files. Honestly, though, I feel Flickr is an amazing service that I’d rather not see abused and lead to limit Pro account sizes. I’d rather see them figure out a way to stop such a thing from being possible or else let it be known such a practice is OK or not in their eyes.

What the !?

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